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Seeker: Is there a simple key to understanding life, especially at difficult times?
Gurudev: Yes. Meditate on a river, Follow it as a visual image from its source to the end where it merges into the sea. Realize that you have a river of pure life force flowing through you at this moment. Hold that realization permanently within you. You can now clearly see where you have been clinging to the bank of life’s river. Openly observe just how long you have been clinging to various negative attachments by holding awareness in the area of fears, worries, doubts of the future and regrets about the past. To perceive our attachments is the first step we take towards being a detached and independent spiritual being. Through the power of affectionate detachment, we separate awareness from that which it is aware of. But being detached does not mean running away from life or being insensitive. When we have the ability to let go, we can at last live in the eternity of the moment, We are warmer, more friendly, more wholesome, more human.
Seeker: Why do we become attached?
Gurudev: We become attached because we do not stop to understand that the experiences that conceived the attachment were only a rapid, a waterfall or an old tree trunk blocking one of the little rivulets as it tried to merge with the great stream ever merging into the ocean. Learn to let go of the banks of the river. Let go the past. Let go the future. Let go reaction. Live in the eternity of the moment and say to yourself, “I am the master of my body, my mind and my emotions.” Satguru Yogaswami declared: “Let happiness and sorrow come and go like the clouds.”
Try this:
Go to a river or a stream, sit beside it in a quiet place alone and see the water as your own life force. Watch how it flows past all obstacles, accepting every change it meets, as it moves steadily towards its goal. Aum.
~ From teachings of Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
